(March 20, 2017, Portland, OR) – Today during a live webinar hosted by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) for thousands of participants nationwide, CedarBridge Group presented the new patient consent app, CareApproveTM as part of 2017 Interoperability in Action Day. With this milestone for CareApproveTM, patients are one step closer to directing how their individual health data flows. The ONC announced in late February that CedarBridge Group LLC was awarded a phase two funding prize of $20,000, and was invited to participate in the third and final phase of the Move Health Data Forward Challenge (MHDFC).

Under the provisions of the America COMPETES Act, MHDFC is a nationwide competition to incentivize development of application programming interface solutions that will allow individuals to securely and electronically authorize the movement of their health data. With this news, CedarBridge has accelerated testing of their revolutionary new app, CareApproveTM, aided by Stella Technology, Inc.

CareApproveTM is a smartphone app that allows patients to grant, and to revoke, permission for providers across the care team to access, send, or receive health information electronically. Due to a patchwork of federal and state requirements for collecting patient consent for sharing health information, many healthcare organizations simply choose to lock down all sensitive health data, even when patients want their providers to have a full picture of their health status when they arrive for an appointment. CareApprove™ helps solve this problem by putting patients in charge of how their health data is shared among providers engaged in their care, even when sensitive data is involved.

The CareApproveTM app will allow patients to determine whether their health data is made available to all healthcare providers they have a medical relationship with, or released on a case-by-case basis for treatment or care coordination.

As a strategy to achieve ONC’s goals for expanding consumer-mediated health information exchange, the MHDFC competition requires using the Health Relationship Trust (HEART) privacy and security specifications for the patient authorization aspects of the app design. The CareApproveTM app incorporates the HEART requirements with rigorously compliant security. By putting the power of data-sharing permissions directly in the hands of patients, CareApproveTM will resolve many of the vexing legal questions facing healthcare organizations storing and sharing health records.

“We are gratified the ONC evaluators have recognized the potential in our CareApproveTM app, and that our solution is advancing to the next round of this unique competition,” said Carol Robinson, Principal and founder of CedarBridge Group. “Organizations in every part of the healthcare sector struggle to manage patient consent across multiple provider groups and care delivery sites. These barriers must be brought down to achieve truly integrated healthcare, where critical information about a patient’s condition is available to trusted—and patient-approved– providers.”

“Our next step in making CareApprove™ available across all healthcare sectors is to demonstrate the flexibility of the app, with a wide variety of use cases.” said Jim Younkin, CedarBridge Group Chief Technology Officer. “Health information exchange services vary across the country, so we’ve designed CareApprove™ to work with common technology architectures. ], CareApprove™ can be easily implemented with DIRECT secure messaging protocols and can also support query-based exchange, where that’s an available option. .”

“Stella Technology is excited to keep pushing forward with CedarBridge Group on this innovative solution to one of health information exchanges’ toughest problems,” said Salim Kizaraly, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Founder. “We’re confident our real-world testing will be successful in any situation, since we’re building the system to connect with a state or regional health information exchange, or to operate independently with a provider’s office by integrating seamlessly with their electronic health records system.”

The five Phase 3 teams have until May 1, 2017 to complete their demonstration pilot projects. Two winners of Phase 3 will each receive $50,000; the awards will be based on the judging team’s assessment of implementation viability for the winning solutions.

CedarBridge Group LLC is a speciality consulting firm providing strategic advice, tactical services, and technical solutions to accelerate health transformation. CedarBridge serves diverse clients across public sectors, including federal, state, and county agencies; and private sectors, ranging from Fortune 50 company Intel Corporation to small healthcare practices and emerging technology firms. CedarBridge is certified as an 8(a) company by the United States Small Business Administration.

Stella Technology, Inc. is a leading provider of integration and collaboration solutions for the next generation, “healthcare-connected” network. Stella Technology’s team of industry-recognized professionals have designed, implemented and run some of the nation’s leading health information exchanges (HIE) and health information technology projects (HIT) for the past twenty years.